


The Galaxy, and Other Unfixable Things

by Socketwrench



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bounty Hunter Asami, F/F, Jedi Korra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:22:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Socketwrench/pseuds/Socketwrench
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the Star Wars/Korra mashup nobody asked for! Toward the end of the Clone Wars, a brash, talented padawan and a young but brilliant bounty hunter find themselves embroiled in a dangerous game of wits, politics, Sith and a distinct violation or two of the Jedi code. Not entirely Star Wars EU-compliant.</p><p>-VERY infrequently updated, until I finish O.A.-</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Galaxy, and Other Unfixable Things

The _Kingfisher_ , an older-model KDY scout ship, sat docked (illegally) on the rooftop of a warehouse. Asami stepped down the ramp and flipped through the electromagnetic spectrum with her full-face blast visor. Even here in the industrial wastes, at this time of night the elevated streets of Coruscant were teeming with life. Infra-red scans showed her the crowds on the street and a few generators. Backscatter showed her the insides of the industrial garage across the way, or at least the 70th floor or so. EM scanning was what she needed. There, on the 67th floor, a massive pulsing light showed a power source that could only be an engine being tested. It was the poor bastard conducting those tests that she needed.

 _Two minutes,_ she thought to herself. _Two minutes and a pair of stun cuffs and we’re in the wind._

As if it was that easy. Targets for the Republic were simple enough, but this was a whole other story. If her scans were accurate, it was like the Separatists wanted their bounty hunters to get electrocuted or poisoned or smashed by some Force-damned trap this guy had set up in his paranoia. Granted, it was paranoia well deserved.

He was called Varrick. He was an eccentric ship designer or somesuch who had skimped on a deal for the Meeros clan, which was owned by the Ralakash Corporation, which was owned by the Trade Federation. Somehow that’d caught enough heat for the CIS to contract half of the guild to bring him in. Asami was lucky she got an inside tip for his location. Word was that there were two models of droids, half a clan of Trendoshans, a family of Duros and some kid who claimed to be a Mandalorian after this guy. She’d rather get this done quickly and be on her way, she decided.

But that was the problem, getting it done. Varrick was in his industrial-park garage, which as far as Asami could tell, was rigged with every kind of intruder deterrent imaginable. Luring him out wasn’t an option. He was too suspicious, and there was no time to find an offer he wouldn’t turn down.  She needed to blast a way in, or a way to force him out.

 _Okay,_ she thought. Her brow furrowed in concentration. _The simplest thing to do would be to cut the power. Of course, he’d have a backup kick on the moment the building lost main power. Unless…_

Her finger traced the outline of the building’s power grid, made plain by the EM scanner in her visor. The hangar was on a separate circuit. If she got the timing _just_ right, she might be able to pull off a Clay Pigeon. Asami smiled at the prospect. It was a risky move, letting him get to a ship, but it’d be the only way to force him out in the open on such a tight schedule. Besides, a galaxy-class ship designer would have some pretty solid safety systems built into his escape craft. Shooting him down wouldn’t kill him. Probably.

Satisfied with the plan, she flipped up her visor with a flick of her neck. It seemed to vanish into the hood of her long crimson jacket, a trick she was quite proud of having designed. Most of her gadgets were like that, it occurred to her, there one moment and gone the next into some hidden pocket or holster or flying off on their own back onto the _Kingfisher_. Well, towards it. Okay, near-ish. There were still some kinks to work out.

She kicked open the rooftop door and found an elevator that would get her to the ground. Cutting power to a building was routine for her by now. Find the incoming power supply, likely to the east in this area, underground.

 _Easy,_ she thought as she followed the current with her visor.

Find the distributor box, probably a small room near the incoming circuit. On a building this size, the box itself would have to be at least four meters wide.

 _He should have booby trapped this,_ she thought as she sliced open the lock.

Get inside, figure out where his workshop and the hangar doors are powered from.

 _Less easy,_ Asami thought. _If I had an astromech, this’d be a cakewalk._ She plugged in her personal datapad and got to work. She chewed her lip a bit, and every once in a while, when a stream of code or firewall vexed her just a little bit too much, her tongue would stick out in concentration. Four minutes and thirteen seconds after she plugged in, she had it. She planted her code bug, a simple overload command timed to execute five minutes after the datapad was disconnected.

 _Just the top ten floors. Short the hangar first so he notices, give it a little time to reboot, then hit the main switch. He’ll freak out and get airborne and I can knock him down over the street,_ she thought as a strange, unpleasant sensation crawled over her.

 _Great. Now I have a bad feeling about this,_ she thought, rather cheesily, as a cool blaster tip was pressed to the back of her hood and a droid’s vocabulator spoke.

“Statement: We were not expecting you so soon, Miss Sato.”

“HK. Glad you could make it,” she said humorlessly. “I take the other two are at the door?”

“Implied threat: I would be more worried about the one holding this blaster rifle. Command: Put your hands on your head and stand up.” Asami put the datapad down, still plugged in and did so. She turned around and placed her feet in front of it, taking note of exactly where the connecting cord was. In front of her was an HK-50-something unit, one of the droid models that routinely take on bounties for some reason. Asami never understood why they needed money, exactly, or why they always traveled in threes. 

“What, you’re not just going to kill me?”

“Facetious reply: Why Miss Sato, you wound us. We would never dream of terminating hostilities with someone whose work we so admire.”

“Uh huh. You talked to Dex, then?”

“Vague correction: We have our own sources. They indicated you were still looking elsewhere.”

“So what’s your play?”

“Terse reply: Nothing you need concern yourself with.”

“Oh come on,” she said. “If you’re not going to kill me, at least let me know what you geniuses came up with. Professional courtesy, you know. You’ve seen the security systems, I take it?” With a slow movement of her foot, she drew out the vibroblade hidden in her boot’s toe and severed the data cord. _Five minutes to wreck these three and get back to the ship._

“Begrudging admission: We have, and they are most troublesome. A mere delay, however. We have easily accomplished far more difficult tasks.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you have.” In one fluid motion, Asami lashed her bladed boot out at the droid’s leg hydraulics and batted aside its blaster rifle. Her cordite-laced blade sank into its hip tensor, destroying the leg’s motor and the droid crashed to the ground. Before it could aim the rifle, Asami yanked her disruptor pistol from its hidden holster and vaporized the HK unit’s core. She stowed her pistol, grabbed her datapad and the HK’s rifle and cracked open the door. Thankfully the other two units weren’t right outside, but if the clanking sounds were any indication they’d be coming around the dark hallway’s corner any second now. Video data from the unit she’d destroyed had probably been streaming directly to them. Now the trick was to get the drop on two things that couldn’t be surprised and already knew she’d be ambushing them.

 _Can’t use ion bursts here,_ she thought. _If the distributor box gets hit, the jig is up. Smoke won’t work, they have infra-red vision. They’d see a proximity mine on EM scanners so that’s out. A straight firefight would take too long. Can’t talk them down either, they’re droids. Droids who like to gloat somehow but still droids. I’ll have to try something loud._

She flipped her blast visor down and engaged the earplugs. This might hurt. EM vision showed her the two remaining HK units about to round the corner that would bring them into view. Hoping this was a good idea, Asami unclipped a small sphere from her belt and twisted it in the center.  She timed the roll perfectly. With no electronic components, the two HK units couldn’t see the miniature thermal detonator roll the ten meters or so down the hallway to the corner. Asami slammed the door shut, but she still heard one of the units’ vocabulators.

“Expletive: Oh firef-”

The explosion ripped through the hallway, nearly forcing the door open against Asami’s back. She felt the heat through the cheap plasteel door, but her explosive was small enough that her jacket and light armor absorbed the brunt of it.

Just like that, it was quiet. She flipped her visor up and looked at the distributor box. Still running. She peeked through the door and saw what her mini-grenade had done. The hallway floor, walls and ceiling were still red-hot at the corner the HK’s had rounded. There were some twisted chunks of metal and wiring scattered around, all that was left of the assassin droids. Asami smirked a bit and took off running.

 _Someone will have heard that,_ she thought. Not Varrick, but someone. That might move her timeline. She tucked the HK unit’s blaster rifle under her jacket and ran back out into the street, back to the warehouse. She checked the time when she got to the roof, two minutes to execution. She sprinted aboard the _Kingfisher_ and started her up. Just in time, too. Her datapad beeped and through the cockpit viewscreen she saw some lights go out across the street. A minute later, they kicked back on and a pair of large hangar doors opened on the western edge of the building, towards the industrial plains. This was going to be fun.

A tiny craft, a sun-sailor by the looks of her, rocketed out of the hangar.

 _This is almost insulting,_ Asami thought. _He didn’t even send a decoy._ Sure enough, there were life signs aboard the sun-sailor. She fired the engines and followed his signal, flying casual enough to be just another takeoff in the busy area. _Okay, the Clay Pigeon is out, those things crumble if they hit a piece of space dust. I’ll have to try something low-orbit, like a Match & Snatch. Tricky, but doable on a dinghy like that._

The fact that he was fleeing in a sun-sailor meant two things. One, he was definitely getting CIS contracts. Or at least commission, considering the price tag on those little bastards. It was a dinghy, but a very nice dinghy. Two, he had no fear of the Republic STR Cruisers currently in orbit along his trajectory. They weren’t really blockade ships, but with the war going as it was they were bound to at least take an interest in a ship made infamous by Count Dooku himself.

 _Firefek,_ she thought. _He’s heading right for them. He’s not just fleeing the CIS, he’s defecting._ That put a new twist on it. She had to bag him before those cruisers took note.

To Asami, piloting was all about timing. Hit the throttle or the joystick too late or too soon and you can’t turn the way you want or break orbit or do anything really. It was math, physics and engineering, three things she excelled at. At the speed he was going, Varrick would be in “look at me, I’m flying towards you” range for the cruisers in three minutes. He’d reach orbit velocity for Coruscant in seventy seconds, which was where she needed him. She flicked open the trigger cover on the _Kingfisher_ ’s joystick and selected the ion cannon. She matched his velocity, a noticeable move at this altitude with the traffic thinning out. He sped up, and she matched it again. Orbital velocity in three…

_Two_

_One_

She fired, and he juked out of the way faster than she’d anticipated. Her shot sailed wide. She locked on and fired again, before he could recover. This time she nailed him. The sun-sailor’s engine sputtered out and he began floating. A minute and thirty to hailing range, but without communications it was more like five minutes. She set the _Kingfisher’_ s auto-pilot to match his slowly falling velocity. He’d achieved orbit, so re-entry wasn’t an issue.

Now came the fun part. Asami pulled her helmet on and sealed it to her armor. She hadn’t anticipated an Extra-Vehicular Activity, so she’d have to make this quick. Her ship wasn’t big, and its airlock wasn’t exactly for freight but it’d hold two people. She stepped in and depressurized, then tethered herself to the EVA winch. She grabbed a self-sealing helmet, designed for emergencies from a locker and opened the hatch.

Asami still marveled. She’d say she was a seasoned spacer. She was, really. But she still marveled. The stars and their glittering companions down on the night side of Coruscant still made her stop and stare and think of everywhere she’d been to and everywhere she’d never see. She imagined each tiny pinprick of light in her view could be as grand as a sun to some world with mysteries none had yet conceived of or as simple as a neighborhood planetside with a restaurant that had amazing noodles or something.

 _Noodles later. Definitely noodles later,_ she decided. _Work now._

The sun-sailor was within cable range now. Four minutes to hailing range, so she pushed out of the airlock and used her boots’ microrepulsors to steer towards the bubble-shaped cockpit. As she circled around the sailor’s port side, she saw something inside the ship that made her heart wrench.

Varrick wasn’t alone. He was shouting animatedly at a mousy-looking woman who looked a good deal more patient than him. Nothing in the intel supported a second party. Asami only had one emergency helmet, and if past experience told her anything, she’d have to vent the cockpit to flush out the target. Spacing some poor girlfriend or secretary or both was about the last thing she wanted on her conscience today.

As she drifted into their view, they stopped and looked out at her. Asami knew it was a longshot, but she gave him a chance. She pointed at the emergency helmet in her hand and then at Varrick. He shouted something and made a gesture at the woman that said “and that’s FINAL” before marching off to the back of the ship.

 _Well that was easy,_ Asami thought. _Weird, though. Dex didn’t say anything about a girlfriend._

She mentally shrugged and scooted aft to the airlock. It was a small ship, so she’d have to enter the main cabin to talk to Varrick. She waited by the door and when the panel turned green, she secured her cable to the outer hull and entered. Three minutes to hailing range.

Asami wasn’t sure what to expect when the inner door opened, but she readied her blaster, set to stun, just in case. One thing she’d considered was that he’d surrender, complaining loudly as rich people so often do. Sometimes, she wasn’t so happy about being right. He was… loud.

“All right you hoodlum, you got me fair and square,” he said, striding into the airlock like this whole thing was his idea. “I don’t like blasters so let’s do this nice and easy. Gimme that helmet and we can go. Just try not to scratch the paint getting us out, you wouldn’t believe what I had to shell out to get this in blue. Zhu Li!” he shouted back into the cockpit, “As soon as you get power back, find Master What’s-His-Name and tell him to do the thing. You there! Miss…”

“Sato.”

“Sato! Great name, reminds me of a speeder I had when I was first learning how to fly. Never did get the hang of it. Crashed a lot, cost me way too much to keep buying more. Well that’s a lousy association, Sato, why’d you have to go and bring that up? Now I’m stressed, and if my blood pressure’s too high I can’t-“

_Thunk_

Asami plopped the helmet on his head and engaged the seals. He was still talking of course, but the helmet kept him muffled. Conveniently, if he kept blabbing the pressure leaving his lungs would keep him alive longer in the hard vacuum they were about to enter. They’d only have a few seconds to reel back to the _Kingfisher_ but it was all she needed, really. She peeked around Varrick, who was still rattling on and looked at the woman in the cockpit. She had a panel open and was messing with some wires.

“I’m really sorry about this, for what it’s worth,” Asami said. The woman, Zhu Li, jammed a few wires together and a panel hummed to life. She glanced at it and shot Asami an entirely unreadable look, then spoke into the panel. _Comm panel,_ thought Asami _. Shit._

“Republic cruiser _Thundercloud,_ this is-“

Asami shoved Varrick out of the way and fired a stun blast at Zhu Li. It hit home and she crumpled to the floor with the comm channel still open. Asami clamped her helmet on and sealed it, then grabbed Varrick for all she was worth and leapt into the airlock, depressurizing as quickly as she dared. Varrick’s muffled ramblings went silent in the vacuum and Asami opened the outer door. She took a pair of binders from her belt and clamped herself to Varrick, then grabbed her tow cable from the outer hull. She gave it a yank and in seconds the two of them were piled into the rapidly pressurizing airlock of the _Kingfisher._

There wasn’t much time left, that cruiser would’ve spotted them by now. Asami hurled Varrick off of her and sprinted to the cockpit. Unfortunately, he’d found the seals on his helmet and was prying it off, laughing the whole time.

“WHOA, now that was a ride! Say, how high up are we, anyway? Someone ought to make a sport out of that, like atmosphere-skiing or something-“

_Zap_

With a flash of blue light, he was finally, mercifully asleep and snoring in the airlock. Her scopes  indicated that the cruiser was closing in on Varrick’s craft, which should buy her enough time to get the _firefek_ out of this system. Asami breathed a sigh of relief and finished up some quick calculations on the navicomputer. This was her favorite part. Grinning like a devil she yanked the throttle back, and as soon as she cleared Coruscant’s gravity the hyperdrive hummed, the stars stretched out and she and her prize were catapulted out into the black.


End file.
